PPA 573 – Emergency Management and Homeland Security Lecture 2a – The Intergovernmental Environment of Emergency Management

Introduction  The ultimate goal of disaster management is comprehensive vulnerability management. “Holistic and integrated activities directed toward the reduction of emergencies and disasters by diminishing risk and susceptibility and building resistance and resilience.”  Recent trends suggest that the system faces serious obstacles in achieving the goal of vulnerability reduction.

Introduction  Damages from natural and human-caused disasters have increased exponentially over the last decade. The damages from hurricane Hugo in 1989 totaled $4 billion, from Hurricane Andrew totaled $28 billion, and from the World Trade Center attacks totaled $96 billion.  The enormous cost increases have prompted policy makers to seek methods to improve preparedness and mitigation, but with limited success.

Comprehensive Emergency Management  Vulnerability reduction rests on comprehensive emergency management that focuses on the four phases of modern disaster management: Mitigation – taking actions that reduce the long-term risk from hazards. Preparedness – planning, training, informing, and exercising to prepare for future disasters. Response – conducting emergency operations, evacuating potential victims, providing food, water, shelter, and medical care, and restoring critical public services. Recovery – rebuilding communities so that individuals, businesses, and government infrastructure can function on its own.

Comprehensive Emergency Management  In an intergovernmental system driven by the goal of comprehensive emergency management: The national government will be most competent “to develop a common emergency management framework supported by broadly accessible information and expertise. State governments will coordinate and allocate resources and protect state physical and social infrastructures. Local governments will focus on individual and community infrastructures. Spillover effects will be handled by transfer grants from higher levels of government.

Comprehensive Emergency Management  Vulnerability reduction requires long-term changes in regulatory policy aimed at reducing economic development in areas especially susceptible to catastrophes.  Having government focus on disaster programs within their area of competence will also reduce vulnerability.  Comprehensive vulnerability management will also lessen social and economic vulnerability in the general population that renders certain segments of the population unusually sensitive to hazards.

Political Responsiveness  The current disaster system has political characteristics that may either enhance or compete with the goals of vulnerability reduction and functional competence.  First, disasters are focusing events. Objective characteristics: –Severity. –Scope. –Visibility.

Political Responsiveness  Disasters are focusing events (contd.). Symbolic characteristics. –Rarity, –Unpredictability, –Victim vulnerability. Characteristics of public goods. These characteristics make disasters important opportunities for the exercise of political leadership.

Political Responsiveness  Second, elected politicians treat disasters as distributive policy. Distributive policies “are characterised by the ease with which they can be disaggregated and dispensed unit by small unit, each unit more or less in isolation from other units and from any general rule (Lowi 1964).” Disasters can be treated as isolated events.

Political Responsiveness  Elected politicians treat disasters as distributive policy (contd.). Emergency disaster appropriations serve as a fertile backdrop for explicit and implicit vote tradeoffs within Congress and between Congress and the President. The president sees disasters as both public responsibilities and political opportunities.

Political Responsiveness  Third, disasters are intergovernmental in nature. The federal government has only played a significant role since Nevertheless, the intergovernmental pressures have gradually expanded the federal role in all aspects of emergency management. Given the low probability of disaster occurrences within any local jurisdiction, there is little political incentive for mitigation and preparedness.

Political Responsiveness  Disasters are intergovernmental in nature (contd.). As a result, local and state jurisdictions rely on members of Congress to lobby for disaster relief to indemnify the jurisdiction against their lack of planning. The federal government has responded to these pressures by publicly pushing responsibility to the local level, but also increasing the variety and scope of organizational assistance.  The interaction of focusing events, distributive politics, and intergovernmental implementation has increased the importance of political responsiveness on disaster assistance.

Summary  The symbolic and political aspects of disasters frequently cause political and bureaucratic actors to bypass standard operating procedures.  By contrast, comprehensive vulnerability management requires long-term planning and a willingness to penalize jurisdictions that do not actively promote mitigation and preparedness.  Elected politicians may not have the will.